kluge

You really can if one is trying to negotiate towards a workable victory.  I think what a lot of pundits are missing is that the West (US in particular) need Russia to lose - just enough.  This drives an incremental approach of slow eroding pressure as opposed to a coherent campaign plan that sees Russia tossed back over the border completely by X date.
As of today and the pending Ukrainian offensive the risk from a western perspective is not Ukraine doing enough, it is doing too much or going too far.  I disagree with the idea that Russia can sustain a 5 year war.  It ignores the main principle of corrosive warfare which is eroding an opponents operational system faster and better than they can repair it.  Russian forces would need a serious inject of external support to shore up its failing system.  So unless China steps in and gets really serious about reestablishing a level of symmetry, Russian is on the wrong end of a devolution curve.  
In the 21st century one cannot simply stuff ill-trained and I’ll-supported troops in holes and hold ground.  Not if your LOCs remain in clear view and actionable ranges.  Your armor is blunted, your AirPower denied and your guns are wearing out.  We are about to see how well a conventional defence hold up under these conditions and my bet is “not well”.
The risk of Ukraine over-reach is not small.  It could create shock and panic at political levels in Russia, and those conditions are when major mistakes start being made. This entire thing has hallmarks of threading a pretty tricky strategic needle.  It may feel good to see ATACMS hammering everything in depth but it could lead to an uncontrollable Russian collapse, which we have discussed at length, and clearly regardless of our opinions this is a serious concern to those in political leadership in the West.
To summarize - slow motion collapse with off-ramps = good.  Uncontrolled collapse in a suicidal game of chicken = bad.  The strategy we are seeing is aligned with the first one.
The_Capt’s second axiom - “strategy must not only encompass a theory of one’s own victory, it must also encompass a theory of an opponents defeat.”

Heh
I once dug a pit down through a rabbit warren, lots of kyoot kittens to deal with after that.
But the worst was digging in at the training area near Singleton, in NSW. The whole area is an iron pan, so it's tink-tink-tink for hours, moving about a teaspoon of dirt at a time. Then, come dawn, we found we'd dug down through a nest of now very angry inchies. Giving up on that spot we moved a few metres away and tink-tink-tinked our way down again, this time through a nest of fire ants.
**** Australia.

What happens when you hit a tilt rod mine under the water.  When we were doing underwater clearance drills for landings or crossings, tilt rod mines were of particular concern because they could be rigged easily for triggering against silent clearance operations.  Impossible to see at night, even with NVGs and could be daisy chained, sometimes with nasty stuff like wire.
Looks like what happens is that one gets blown very high into the air and spread over a large area (nod to Blackadder).  Always knew they were bad news but never actually saw one used in combat.

As far as I can see the vast majority of these hits on civilian targets are just misses from nearby (real or imagined) military related infrastructure (they have a fairly loose definition of that though). The Russians are not deliberately terror bombing they just don't care if they hit civilians while they go after what they perceive as higher value targets. 
These misses are caused by old/bad information, inaccurate missiles, poor mission planning, AD shootdowns etc. The Russians (rightly or wrongly) think they are targeting ammo dumps, machine repair shops, factories, training centres, transport infrastructure, hospitals, substations etc. 
If the Russians really wanted to do a terror bombing campaign they would just fling a bunch of dumb bombs or rockets randomly at Kharkiv or Kherson and we would be getting daily updates of the destruction. 
Don't take this as me defending them, but they are not carpet bombing like it's 1945, and they don't want to waste million dollar missiles on a handful of civilians in a tower block. 

Since I am not above shamelessly stealing a joke from Reddit:
 
Are we sure that is an oil depot on fire and not Admiral Kuznetsov pulling into Sevastopol harbour?

Sniff sniff
I smell shaping ops... 
 

Look fair points and I do not want to punish counter-thinking, that is not what we are about here.  However, it really needs to be based on some fundamental indicators.  We would need to see a shift in RA capability on a systems level.  A few TU22s with napalm does not an effective CAS program make.  In fact given that platform we are more likely going to see incendiary terror attacks because Russia is all “FU LOAC!” -  note: see no-normalization, which is no doubt Putin’s plan as he does not want Russia to have a viable out as it would undermine him.
I do want to unpack just one thing further - the Putin Line.  Ok, so obstacles are basically inert in reality.  They cannot move or cause effects at range.  They exist solely to create enormous friction on an opponent in a very narrow window.  When properly supported this can be decisive as a smaller force can really cut a larger force to pieces.  Problem - you need well coordinated and agile smaller forces.  When it comes to quality capability Russia has the smaller force.  Guns that can rapidly respond and shoot and move.  C-move forces that can quickly reposition.  
The RA has basically been throwing up all over itself for over a year. The quality forces it needs to actually exploit those narrow windows of opportunity are in the minority.  Instead they have wads of infantry stuffed into holes and even those are mauled up.  When I saw Russia attacking this winter, I was shocked (and probably should not have been).  It is pure madness to bleed out a force on useless objectives when one is trying to freeze a conflict in place and play a long game.  So now the RA is badly beat up.  It has lost a lot of operational connective tissue and enablers it simply cannot make up for.  One could argue that Bakhmut was not a Russian Offensive as much as it was a Ukrainian shaping operation.
So what?  Well they can have mounds of dragons teeth and AT ditches but their ability to actually cover them with effective fires is highly in question.  These are really big frontages they have to cover off.  Further the west is pushing all the ISR to the UA so they can see the weak points.  The UA can also conduct deep strike campaigns to make things worse both before and during the offensive.  Then, as has been noted, once the shell is first rotted out, and then broken, there is nothing substantial behind it.
Finally, I am not even sure obstacles work like they used to anymore.  If I can see your entire operational system and hit it, I could stand back and hammer it until it collapses under its own weight and simply walk over the obstacles.  The actual ROI on obstacles as they stand now is in question.
This is a lot like back in the Gulf War.  People saw the massive, and amazingly professional Iraqi obstacle belts and got really concerned.  In the end it did not matter, massed AirPower followed up by GPS enabled manoeuvre made all that work useless.  I do not think the UA has the same level of advantage here but they likely have enough to crack this egg and make some break outs, likely in a couple locales.
Gonna be one for the books…and stay tuned in right here kids, we will be providing colour commentary the whole way!

Part 3 of battle for “Cyclops” position. Shows how difficult and dangerous this work is even with drone support:
 

The trouble with defining success is that in the real world success is a spectrum, not a toggle. The question isn't "will it be a success?", but "how successful will it be?". Ukraine is certain to retake some territory and inflict some casualties, just as it is certain to take some casualties. But it all comes down to how much of each. If they just manage to retake a handful of towns and inflict a few thousand casualties, but lose tens of thousand of soldiers in the process, then it will be a dismal failure (like the Russian winter offensive). If they manage to drive the Russians out of Ukraine entirely, effectively destroy the entire Russian army, and only lose a handful of men, then it will be a crushing victory. And there are a million variations in between those two extremes, each more successful than some possible outcomes, and less successful than other possible outcomes.
For my part I'm hoping to at least see a chunk of territory retaken on par with the Kherson or Kharkiv offensives, with enough strength left in the Ukrainian army to follow it up with at least one more offensive before the year is out. If it can accomplish something of strategic value, like cutting the Crimean land bridge, then that's even better. An even better outcome would be to not only take everything up to the neck of Crimea, but to retake Crimea as well all in one go. And in my wildest dreams I even imagine this thing collapsing the whole Russian frontline.
Of course the media is going to report the outcome as a position on a toggle, not a position on a spectrum (success or failure, not a degree of success). Whether it will be reported as a success will be determined by whether the results exceeded or fell short of public expectations. So it would seem that the best way to get PR victories in a war is to keep public expectations as low as possible. Kharkiv was playing this game on easy mode, since it came completely out of the blue, with no public expectations at all. Does anyone have any feel for what the public expectations are for this offensive? Are people expecting it to drive the Russians completely out of Ukraine or to just move the needle a bit?

Kofman and Evans is a pretty decent rundown of where we are on the offensive. Kofman is fairly optimistic and both are critical of the pre-game jitters from the USG and the overall theory of success. 
https://warontherocks.com/2023/04/the-calm-before-the-storm-waiting-for-ukraines-offensive/?__s=4983vxa1cr7umn9uarm1
Caveat: it would shed more light on the complexities involved if there was less emphasis on supposed American political considerations (supporting Ukraine is popular...this is a bad point) and the more rigorous interpretation that arbitraging Chinese intervention is a far likelier influence.

It's also a ridiculous assumption to assume that the Russia Airforce is a shiny deus ex machina ready to be pulled out of the box to win the war. Yes it has a lot of planes. What it lacks is doctrine, pilots, attitude and upkeep. We've been to this rodeo before with the Russians and we know how it's highly likely to turn out. 
https://www.businessinsider.com/fighting-in-ukraine-reveals-russian-air-force-fragility-think-tank-2022-12?r=US&IR=T
 
 

Well I can’t speak to “smug” - perhaps you meant “informed”, but we have been seeing these sorts of reports since this war began.  Some come from a place of honest fear that Russian superiority will assert itself, others from hope that it will (e.g. Macgregor).
As to the “hundreds of Russian aircraft”, well the other factor is the Russian willingness to lose them.  Unlike mobs of poorly trained men, Russia has a limited amount of effective fix wing aircraft and a big @ss sky that it needs to control, largest sovereign airspace in the world.  So I expect, much like this entire war to date, the Russia’s willingness to throw its remaining AirPower away in a denied airspace is pretty damn low.
As to your points:
- not sure where you are getting “easy” from, nothing easy about any of this.  What it won’t be is “impossible” which is what both the OP and articles seem to suggest.  Seems like many fear/hope for the opening of the Somme.
- We really need to get over WW2 and the Russian defence myths.  In this war Russia has failed on defence pretty consistently.  We had no siege of Kherson, or Kharkiv.  Instead we have seen three operational level collapses.  The biggest issue with the “bloody Russian defence” is that they are not defending Russian soil, this is a discretionary invasion war in another country.  I am sure some units will dig in but a lot of others - now mauled by whatever this crazy winter assault was - are likely going to buckle early and fast.  We should see a new line being drawn somewhere but I suspect it will be a scramble back to the Crimea bottleneck and an Eastern line N-S.
- I am a military engineer by trade and frankly have no idea how obstacles will work in this environment.  Given the effects of corrosive warfare that we have seen so far, I am not even sure these will work as viable investments.  The Russians are clearly thinking “force multipliers” but there are basic calculus’s in the wind right now.
- If Russia had the ability to conduct deep operational battle (e.g. static bridges, rail etc) via AirPower, then why has it waited until now to use it?  It bled itself white over the winter trying to grab something/anything and we did not see a single coherent operational level air campaign. So now while it is being assaulted it is suddenly going to figure that out? I am sure we will see some weak disjointed attempts but if Russia could do this - do it freakin now before those reported 9 fresh UA Bdes form up on the start line.
- Russian EW and UAS will add friction to the attack.  But they need to to more than that.  They need to disrupt and dislocate.  This means Russia need to be able to employ a defensive form of corrosive warfare (the ability to project enough precision attrition and friction on an opponent to create wide systemic failure in their military operational machine).  We have not seen this.  Russia has been relying almost entirely on old school front edge combat attrition, trading 3 men for 1 theirs type stuff.  
- Ukrainian formations are green?  What kind of shape do you suppose the RA units are in?  They are 1) pretty banged up and replacements likely rushed into place and 2) have not had a free and donated western force generation stream to pull on.  The UA has experience in conducting operational level offensives, the staffs and HQs that pulled that off are anything but green.  All of it rested on an increasingly more integrated western supported ISR and targeting enterprise.  In the competition of “who is in rougher shape before the spring/summer offensive of ‘23”. I gotta go with Russia.
I am not predicting a rout of the RA back to its borders (but if it goes well enough that is not off the table), but this thing has the hallmarks of another Russian operational collapse in the making - highly eroded operational systems, significant C4ISR asymmetry, and still no sign they can establish favourable strategic or operational pre-conditions in any domain.  If they do manage to hold the UA back effectively, then something fundamental will have changed and we damned well will need to understand what that is because it might mean that this war is done pretty much where they stand now and we are out of military solutions.  But I am not there yet, quite the opposite, I am wondering how successful the UA will be and whether not it will be enough to keep the west engaged in this.  As we saw at Kherson - which many western pundits ping to with disappointment- the bar of western expectations is sometimes unreasonably high, largely because we have no modern experience in wars like this one.
Regardless, I guess we will see soon.

I think I would need to see some clear evidence that Russia can actually achieve air superiority, or even parity in order for them to “stop shows”.  My honest recommendation is to stop reading any online “expert” who solely talks about capability.  “Look napalm bomb”, “Look a Russian HARM”.  Arguing solely from a tactical capability perspective is the hallmark of an amateur.
First off the Russian C4ISR system would have to dramatically increase its ability for rapid target queuing and joint integration between air and land power pretty much from tac to strategic. Can anyone point to where this has actually happened?  The Russian air war is still happening in glorious isolation of the land war from what we have seen so far.
Second, we would need some indication that Russian can establish conditions where they are able to create freedom of action to exploit that C4ISR advantage (which they do not have).  We have not.  If Russia could establish even pockets of air superiority they would have done it at Bakhmut or any of the high profile offensives they tried over the winter.
And third, one would need some evidence that Ukrainian Air Denial ability is slipping.  So far we have a leaked report (which may or may not have been doctored) and a few Russian “ARM” strikes.  There has been no degradation of Western ISR support, in fact it has gone the other way.  Ukrainian Air Denial is more than just Radar AD, the MANPAD situation has driven the Russian’s batty.  And more Air Denial systems are coming online - not less.  So this one is dodgy at best.
Finally, we did not see a Russian Air Apocalypse last Fall during the last two Ukrainian offensives?  Have things gotten better for Russia in the interim in the air picture?  About the only positive they have is that as they lost ground and while retreating they were in fact shortening the time and distance to air support.  Beyond that I do not see why or how the Russian Air Force suddenly becomes a wall of steel and precision fires only 5 months after being totally ineffective while the UA took back about 50% of Russian gains had left after the Northern front fell.  I mean seriously, the Russian Air Force is able to stop a major UA offensive now, but they stayed out of Kherson?
I have no doubt the Russian Air Force will be in play but it would need full air supremacy to turn things around at this point.  That is complete C4ISR dominance, watertight SEAD and a demonstrated ability to integrate air and land battles.  And this still would not solve for UA deep precision fires superiority.
Why do people keep coming up with Russian “magic rabbits in hats”? Seriously if Russia had one or two they would have used them by now.  One does not wait until you are teetering on operational collapse to “finally get serious”.    

Now hold on there, Steve-o....are you trying to tell me that the most consequential decision in American politics since the end of the Cold War is *not* about a couple of car dealerships in Western Ukraine???
Man...the DeepState™  really has it's claws into you. Next thing you know, you'll be saying support for Ukraine isn't a symptom of the woke virus.
 

I don't like disagreeing w Beleg because I know I will lose 🤪, but I just want to clarify my point.
Yes, he was a commie. And hitler a fascist.  But I am saying what they really were were sociopathic narcissistic megalomaniacs that happened to be commie or fascist.  Doesn't mean they couldn't also believe in commie or fascist ideology.  I am saying the commie/fascist thing didn't matter so much.  Especially considering they both were the same murderous monsters despite having 'opposite' views.  Is Putin a fascist?   A mob boss?  A nuevo-soviet commie?  Does it matter? -- what matters is that he's a murderous megalomaniac.

So we should help them by projecting enough energy into the environment it can be seen from space?  High energy solutions are problematic as they then need more high energy solutions to keep them alive.  And no one has solved for a 155mm PGM round, or HIMAR coming in at Mach 3+.
The fundamental flaw with some US (and most western militaries)thinking is that they are trying to citadel their existing structures and treating UAS/unmanned as something to be managed.  This was the overall strategy for ATGMs (detectors, smoke, manoeuvres, combined arms and finally APS), which was never really tested en masse but that did stop us from assuming that these ATGM counters would work.  Worse, we assumed that these counters would continue to work as ATGM tech marched on.
As the Russians have found out 1) next-gen ATGMs are incredibly hard to “manage” in fact for some they really can’t be and 2) UAS in combination with C4ISR are changing the fabric of the battle space.  This is not manageable, it requires some deep rethinks on how military power is projected in the future.  
Strapping high energy lasers on everything and then trying to do Bn TF manoeuvres just like we did in Iraq is going to lead to a really, really bad day…and to be honest most people in the biz know this already.  Protecting legacy systems will be required but it will only buy a narrow context of advantages in a narrower set of employment.  Point defence systems need to be just that “point” as in last minute “holy crap some got through” not “queue the Disco Star Wars soundtrack and start burning holes all over the sky”.  It is the other layers of the bubble that will need to be developed along with new types of organizations and TTPs.
But if I know military thinking we will see a 90 ton tank with so much crap slapped on it the damn thing won’t be able to stay upright.  Then we will have to do same with logistics and suddenly a viable BCT will weigh roughly as much as Pluto…because gravity does not care about your feelings, cap badge, investments or budgetary profiles

Charging trenches in your BMP with improvised dead guy armor is an interesting tactic.

Well, the West is frequently taking the moral high ground towards the rest of the world. And that simply means we are held to higher standards. If we criticize other countries about the 100 things that go wrong there (rightly so!) every single thing we are doing wrong hurts our credibility (internally and externally, e.g. there is often a lot of grumbling about how democratic Germany really is compared to China...)
I'd still much rather live in Europe or the US but here is another problem: While it is good to live in a western democracy, many people living elsewhere couldn't care less whether they are dealing with a democracy or some autocrat because the net result, for them is identical.
The US get the most criticism because they have the greatest power (with great power comes great responsibility...). But there is another thing to consider: Hollywood. Everyone on the globe knows Hollywood movies (German movies... not so much, which is a good thing...). And there the US and especially the US armed forces are mostly depicted as fighting for the good of all mankind and not (like everyone else) for their own interests. So the contrast with reality is particularly strong here.

It's sort of...we really definitively...their job to worry about stuff like this. It would be a scandal if they didn't.

Can’t get too far into it but that ball has moved quite a bit since back in the day.  Let’s just say that Int staff are armed with more than talc and Stadlers these days.  Personally I can barely keep up.

Fascists have always when convenient, appropriated socialist imagery and slogans. Doing so does not make them socialists or leftists, multiple orgs and tendencies repudiate them. Russia has always had a far right nationalist problem. It should always be called out for what it is.

I spit up my drink on my screen at this one.   Just how much delusion can one snort up one's nose and not overdose?  Especially in light of an earlier point just above that - "an end to all immigration."
There is just plain $**t talking and then there is "mad dog howling at the moon" talking.

To quote a summary of the speech given by a user who shared this to me originally:
"It appears a Russian Naval officers mutiny is being announced, with the intent of restoring a true Tsar to succeed Putin. An assembly of Russian officers said that if their leader comes to power, there will be fundamental changes.
The points:
"personnel revolution";
lustration of the enemies of the people;
"degreasing" the oligarchs;
severing diplomatic relations with all hostile countries;
an end to all immigration
the abolition of the free circulation of the dollar and the euro;
growth of the population of the Russian Federation to one billion.
While this may not lead to internal war or conflict right away, it is certainly seditious. The new Supreme Ruler of Russia and future candidate for President of Russia 2024 has been nominated from within the Officers' Assembly: Captain Ivan Otrakovsky.
Otrakovsky has a long history of membership in far right nationalist groups and associations with breakaway sect of the Orthodox Church. If he doesn't find a window big enough in the coming months, with the help of what looks to be significant military backing, this could very well be the new Tsar of the most horrifyingly dystopian country on the planet. Brace for impact."
 
Sounds far right to me

Russian authorities claimed BSF repelled attack on outer harbor on 24th of April in 3:30 of morning, but indeed one drone exploded inside of Streletskaya Bay. So, it could overcame six lines of defense. Interesting, that Russian MoD initially reported about two drones (one was destroyed, other "self-detonated on outer harbor"), later they already claimed about three drones , but anyway still to tell about two destroyed, so where the third is gone? ) 

Other video of drone explosion in the bay and video how drones approached to the bay
Geolocation shows as if explosion was on the mooring

Also about why today? On 24th of April 1918 army of Ukrainian People Republic in result of dare attack entered to Crimea through Perekop. So it's just a symbolic greeting and a tip )

I didn't translate all, what wrote Mashovets, but he counts in other way
On his opinion zone of responsibility of FG "East" is about 175 km in a straight line. And if we take into account all curves of frontline this lenght inreases to 250 km. I doub't he is right about 250 km, because according DeepState map frontline from Shcherbaky to Slavne is 190 km. But well. Further he says most of capable troops deployed now on Vuhledar direction (and this is much more, than Vuhledar town itself - approx from Velyka Novosilka to Slavne).
So on Vuhledar direction now involved 8 brigades (motor-rifle, air-assault, naval infantry), 4 regiments (motor-rifle, tank), 5 motor-rifle regiments of Territorial Troops (TT, most of them actually "motor-rifle on papaer only"), 4 rifle regiments (likely LDPR), 2 rifle battalions of DPR TD, 3 separate rifle battalions, 2 BARS battalions. In reserve: 1 tank regiment of TT, 2 motor-rifle battalions of TT
On Orikhiv direction they have: 4 brigades (tank, motor-rifle, air-assault, naval infantry), 7 regiments (motor-rifle, naval infantry), 2 tank battalions (regular, TT), 1 air-assault battalion, 7 motor-rifle regiments of TT, 1 rifle regiment of  LDPR,  4 rifle battalions (LDPR, TT), 12 separate battalions and combined detachments (Rosgvardiya, Wagner, BARS). In reserve: 1 motor-rifle regiment of TT
So he says it's about one "FULL conditional battalion" for 4,5 km of front. BUT. This is for one-echelone defense! As I wrote in previous post, Russians now are regrouping own defense in two echelones. So they will be forced either to expand responsibility zone of theese "conditional battalions", but not full so far more that appointed 5 km, or build focal defense, having hope on own artillery, aviation and "Tsar-ditch"